The Once and Future Humanities

Here’s a link to the You Tube video of a talk I gave in New Zealand at the University of Auckland last month. I am interested in the idea that the humanities are about meaning–and do not aspire to offer explanations the way that the natural and social sciences do. I intend to pursue this notion in the coming years. The other big issue here is the effort to get humanities educators to jettison their coverage anxieties. Imparting information is close to a dead loss in the classroom. Just because the teacher said it, that doesn’t mean the student got it–or will retain it. Cramming more and more content into the syllabus might make the teacher feel good, but I am convinced that it is pretty useless.